"Form is empty" simply means that this world is illusory. Just like how in your dream, you see the form of a beautiful girl, you can touch her, you can smell her fragrance, and you could probably also have sex with her and get orgasmic pleasure, in the same way this "real" world is also such that all these feelings, sensations etc based on form are null.

Johnny Dangerous wrote:My basic understanding of "form is emptiness" on just an intellectual level is just that what defines a thing as that thing..is the very lack of inherent existence of the thing.

For example we call a car a car, but in the component parts of a car there is no car, therefore "car" is empty, the same goes for anything that manifests or is conceviable, including the Skandhas that make up well...everything. that's why form is actually emptiness, anything we can name or conceptualize is fundamentally empty of itself, and in fact is defined by this characteristic.

Empty words. No meaning does inhere in these words. Just visible forms.

Yes, obviously my words also would share the same property..your point is?

For some reason it's this very common thing to tell people to "not think", yet what I wrote is very standard Buddhist philosophy, that can be found in plenty of well-known explanations of emptiness. Is there some reason it seems to provoke people to tell others they think too much?

We all know intellectualizing a thing is not the same as realization of it, i'm not sure that needs to be pointed out.

May the eyes of living beings be gladdened by skies made splendid by clouds that lightnings garland, while on earth below, the peacocks dance with joy as showers of rain, falling gently, approach.

Rakshasa wrote:"Form is empty" simply means that this world is illusory. Just like how in your dream, you see the form of a beautiful girl, you can touch her, you can smell her fragrance, and you could probably also have sex with her and get orgasmic pleasure, in the same way this "real" world is also such that all these feelings, sensations etc based on form are null.

Hopefully your Maha Mudrā will have less neurosis than your Karma Mudrā and you won't have to make small talk afterwards.

we cannot get rid of God because we still believe in grammar - Nietzsche

Johnny Dangerous wrote:For some reason it's this very common thing to tell people to "not think", yet what I wrote is very standard Buddhist philosophy, that can be found in plenty of well-known explanations of emptiness. Is there some reason it seems to provoke people to tell others they think too much?

We all know intellectualizing a thing is not the same as realization of it, i'm not sure that needs to be pointed out.

If there is expectation that reference should be fabricated then it should be known that it cannot and that there is neither ill-will nor the consciousness of knowing anything.

Back to the OP, the passage from the HS goes "Here, Shariputra, form is emptiness, and emptiness verily is form, emptiness is not different from form; form is not different from emptiness; what is emptiness, that is form, the same is with feeling, perception, habitual tendencies, and consciousness."

There really is no emptiness in form; rather emptiness verily is form. This takes out any ontological trace. Form, we recall from the Nikayas, is "like a lump of foam, feeling like a water bubble, etc. (S.iii.142). Commenting on this HS passage Vimalamitra informs us that emptiness is like the "city of gandharvas" meaning emptiness is like a dream.